What’s Up With ADR Availability?
Advance Dining Reservation availability can be limited or inconsistent, especially for certain parties and restaurants, prompting questions and concerns from Walt Disney World fans. This post attempts to answer all of that with our experiences, ADR searches we’ve conducted, what readers have shared, and what’s happening ‘on the ground’ with WDW dining.
The troubles with Advance Dining Reservation availability are yet another issue that has morphed over time. When Walt Disney World first reopened, physical distancing and a significantly smaller slate of operational restaurants meant that demand far exceeded supply. This was true even as the parks operated with capacity caps and the resorts seldom were anywhere close to fully booked.
Obviously, a lot has changed since then. For the last year-plus, reduced restaurant capacity problems have persisted because of staffing shortages. If you’re wondering why Walt Disney World has not yet brought back something, there’s a 90% chance that’s the answer. (The other 10% is money…which also plays a role in the staffing shortage.) There is more than enough demand to bring back everything at this point. The biggest impediment is that operational locations are short-staffed and ones that have yet to reopen need to hire and train new Cast Members.
This is hardly unique to Central Florida or Walt Disney World. You’ve probably seen similar stories on your local news about the hospitality industry having a tough time finding workers. We’ve also discussed it in countless articles. Nevertheless, it’s worth reiterating yet again for those who are new to the site. Disney has left a lot of money on the table by virtue of the staffing shortages. (Point being: they are absolutely not by design.)
The primary limiting factor is a lack of Cast Members. Unfortunately, the company was caught off-guard by the speed of America’s reopening and labor market realities. The company has brought back and ramped up the College Program and international programs, while also undertaking a hiring blitz and offering hiring bonuses. That has all helped, but only so much. (Disney is also experiencing unprecedented employee turnover, which has hurt.)
Staffing shortages persist for several key positions, including on the culinary teams. CEO Bob Chapek has directly addressed this problem, stating that Walt Disney World’s capacity constraints are self-imposed, and due to insufficient restaurant capacity to serve more people.
In short, dining capacity is still pretty far from 100% of what it was pre-closure. For the sake of discussion, let’s just arbitrarily say it’s around 75% due to reduced hours, missing meal services, staffing shortages, closed locations, and other assorted inefficiencies. (From what I’ve heard, this arbitrary number is actually not that far off.)
It’s one thing to reduce capacity on a ride or show; wait times go up until enough people balk and opt. Eating is not the type of “experience” that people visiting theme parks opt out of doing. The distribution of people can be reallocated to something more efficient, like Cosmic Ray’s or Pecos Bills, but few people visiting Magic Kingdom for the day will be discouraged from dining by ADR availability or Mobile Order return windows.
One thing we’ve noticed lately is that last-minute availability is often better than booking a few weeks or even a full month or more in advance. In fact, we’ve been able to score same-day or night-before reservations to some of the most difficult ADRs (by post-reopening standards) in the last two months.
To put this theory to the test that ADR availability is better last minute than it is at the one month mark, we conducted dozens of searches today. (Actually, not just today–this article has been a work in progress for 3 weeks, and keeps getting pushed back. I’ve done these same searches two other times, and the results have been more or less consistent with what’s below).
In searching for ADRs today for a party of 2, we found 32 restaurants with availability when we simply searched for “lunch.”
That number jumped to 53 when looking for dinner, which likely reflects more restaurants being open for dinner. It’s also slightly further into the future–at least some restaurants are likely doing Walk-Up Waitlist for those lunch openings.
Readers often comment that we have better luck since we’re a smaller party. In actuality, the opposite is true right now. During this era of limited capacity, Walt Disney World’s booking engine actually prioritizes larger parties. (For a while, it was impossible to book certain restaurants as a party of 2. We didn’t eat at Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant for almost 2 years because of this.)
When increasing our party size to 4, the options for lunch increased to 46 restaurants with availability and 65 at dinner. That’s definitely the sweet spot, as a party of 6 had 40 lunch options and 59 restaurants with availability at dinner.
Availability was even better when searching tomorrow, which is a Saturday–prime date night for locals. For a party of 2, lunch restaurants with open ADRs increased to 42 and dinner to 60. This included plenty of popular picks, like Beaches & Cream, Chefs de France, Oga’s Cantina, ‘Ohana, and more.
For 4, there were 60 restaurants with availability at lunch and 74 at dinner. Again, this included the hard-to-book restaurants you see in the above screenshot, plus Boma, Cape May Cafe, Flying Fish, Garden Grill, Topolino’s Terrace, and Tusker House. All of the aforementioned restaurants had multiple ADR times, too.
Even for a party of 6, there are still 44 choices at lunch and 65 dinner ADRs available for Saturday night. That’s really good by historical standards, and even better relative to recent limitations.
One thing to keep in mind here is that I’m simply searching for “lunch” or “dinner” to simply this process. If you search for specific times or specific restaurants, that can yield different results or show availability for specific times that did not previously appear.
Advance Dining Reservation choices for Sunday are slightly lower across the board, but still showing healthy numbers. You’d have a number of good options regardless of your preferences and party size–lots of character, buffet, mid-tier, Signature, etc. restaurants.
Monday is when we see the biggest drop. My first thought was that this might be because that’s a weekday, and restaurants allocate their limited (staffing) resources to weekends v. weekdays. However, next Saturday also shows diminished availability as compared to this Saturday. There’s no historical basis for this–neither in ADR booking trends nor anticipated attendance/occupancy levels.
Jumping a full month into the future, and availability looks similar to next Saturday.
It’s actually slightly worse across the board, but only by a few ADR options. Look closer and you’ll see that the specific restaurants available–and unavailable–is actually quite different despite the total numbers being similar.
Finally, we look as far forward as the calendar allows–to November 15, 2022.
This produces the most interesting results. A few restaurants for which we had seldom seen near-term availability (e.g. California Grill) have ADR openings. Conversely, many that we know are not popular have nothing. This list is longer and includes Amare, City Works, Coral Reef, the Edison, Skipper Canteen, and more options in Disney Springs. The third party restaurants are easy to explain away–the way some of those release reservations differs from Disney-operated locations. The others, not so much.
A few days earlier is Veterans’ Day weekend, which we’ve flagged as being a particularly busy time at Walt Disney World.
However, ADR availability is not materially better or worse that Saturday. This is especially true for a party of 4 (consistently the sweet spot for the best selection), but even parties of 2 and 6 have plenty of choices.
From all of these test searches and our own firsthand experience since the start of summer, there are a few lessons that can be learned.
First, smaller parties are penalized. Thankfully, there are ways to circumvent this, but it’s still frustrating for a couple to be penalized by the system when the table space exists. (Although you probably disagree if you’re a larger family!)
Second, some restaurants release all or most of their reservations at the start of the booking window, and seldom offer reservation refills. The main ones that come to mind here are Chef Mickey’s, Artist Point, Cinderella’s Royal Table, Space 220, Topolino’s Terrace (breakfast), and California Grill.
You either need to book these at 60 days, or hope for the best with cancellations the night before. Walk-Up Waitlist is another option, and we’ve seen a few of those restaurants (and other tough ones) available via Walk-Up Waitlist that have not done day-of ADR drops.
Third, a lot of restaurants aren’t releasing all or any ADR availability at the 60 day mark. Throwing out third parties as obvious anomalies, this is still happening with many Disney-owned restaurants.
The big one we’ve seen holding back ADRs (probably more noticeable in part due to the alphabetical ordering when we search!) is Be Our Guest Restaurant. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen nothing at 60 days, but there are numerous times for lunch and dinner released the morning of or one day in advance.
While availability dumps are most common same-day or 1-2 days ahead of time, that’s not always the case.
We’ve heard reports (and seen ourselves) instances of certain restaurants holding back all or most reservations, and then releasing them 20-30 days in advance for a wide range of dates.
All of this is almost certainly a result of the staffing shortages. (This isn’t really speculative–we’ve had Cast Members at multiple locations confirm as much.) We once again discussed staffing shortages at length above, and that’s because they’re a big deal when it comes to ADR availability.
It used to be the case that we recommended searching for last-minute ADRs due to cancellations. That advice still applies, but the bigger reason is restaurants opening up more reservations. That is more much more significant, and it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Maybe it happened before to some extent, but I don’t recall restaurants “holding back” ADRs being a thing on a widespread level.
Finally, ADR availability or lack thereof is not really conclusive of crowds. It’s generally true that fewer seating options at table service restaurants is suggestive of higher crowds and more options means lower crowds. If we’re painting with broad strokes, that’s still–largely–the case. But the two are more disconnected than ever before, and there are variables and other externalities (e.g. EPCOT festivals, conventions, weather, holidays, etc.) that change the equation.
There’s also the reality that only a fraction of all guests dine in table service restaurants. The available total table service capacity, even when firing on all cylinders, is a small percentage of the total park capacity. Moreover, when a restaurant like Cinderella’s Royal Table is booked up, there’s no telling how much demand exceeded supply. Maybe in September, it’s fully booked and had another ~125 families who would’ve made reservations if they could’ve. But in November, it might’ve had ~250 parties who were shut out each day. Excess demand for ADRs is not something we can measure.
Similarly, this is also why Disney Vacation Club availability offers almost no insight into crowds. Sure, if there’s a lot of availability, it probably says something about attendance being low. The opposite is not true, though. DVC almost always has excess demand–that’s just the business model (coupled with inventory issues).
We mention this because a lot of people point to DVC or ADR availability as indicative of crowds. That’s not even remotely the case with DVC, and even with ADRs, the correlation is tenuous at best.
Ultimately, there are a couple of key takeaways from this. The first is that Advance Dining Reservation, as a whole, is markedly better than it was one year ago. Even excluding the current off-season, which was super slow last year, too. This is not an entirely new trend, and we’ve been having a lot more success booking ADRs since May–including summer season. There also continue to be good options and availability during the holiday season.
The second is that not every restaurant at Walt Disney World releases reservations in the same way. Some should–or must–be booked 60 days out. Otherwise, you’re not going to get them because there’s so much excess demand and certain popular restaurants seldom release more reservations. Then there are other locations, that don’t release their full slate of ADRs until only a few days in advance (or the same-day) when their scheduling and staffing situations crystalize.
Accordingly, the best approach to booking ADRs is scoring some at 60 days and booking others at the last-minute. Of course, this itself can be stressful and not work well with other vacation plans you might make. Personally, I would book all or most of my ADRs at the last minute unless character dining were a top priority.
With every other type of restaurant, there are typically sufficient options 0-3 days in advance and some of the least popular ADRs are actually the best restaurants. Advance Dining Reservations are one of many aspects of Walt Disney World vacation planning that I don’t think are worth stressing out over (again, unless character dining is important), and I’ve felt that way for a while.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
If you’ve visited or booked ADRs for Walt Disney World in the last few months, what has been your experience? Have you had success at the last-minute (0-3 days in advance)? Had challenges at the 60 day mark? Notice any differences in the dynamic as compared to pre-closure? Think staffing shortages explain most of what’s happening with fluctuations and limitations in Advance Dining Reservations? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I think the problem with dinning reservations is more than staff shortages. I tried for weeks to book the German Biergarten for 2 and my window is wide open as I’m in town for months. After talking with a cast member their response was they are aware it’s messed up and no matter how much they complain nothing has been fixed and recommended 2 things. One is that complaints from guests are more important than staff so complain. Second was when you try to book your reservation if there is only two of you, lie and say 4. I did this and got my reservation after the site said none available for 2. This shows it is a program error not staffing shortages. When we arrived at the Biergarten to eat, the hall which seats probably 300 people had 50 customers with waiters standing around with nothing to do.
That’s interesting–thanks for sharing.
For a while, this was deliberate given the seating situation at Biergarten and physical distancing. However, that was all dropped over a year ago. I wonder if Disney has neglected to change the ADR system for Biergarten? (They did make the change for Sci-Fi.)
There is definitely a penalty for parties of two! We were not able to get a lot at 60 days out and continued to search leading up to our with no real luck! Last week while we were there we searched throughout the week looking for last minute things. When we searched for 2 the options were really limited but when we searched for 3 we were able to get last minutes tables at Space 220 and Storybook Dining!! We just apologized when we arrived for the change and never got complaints!
Going Oct 16 Just 2 people and tried on 60 days out and couldn’t get anything we wanted. Tried the website first and had problems with it. Got some reservations but all were 2nd choices. Look a few times a day plus also have notifications for when something becomes available. I am hoping that a day or two before we go some will open up. The restaurants we tried for and didn’t get were 50s Prime time cafe, Cinderellas Royal Table, Topolinas (breakfast or dinner). Space 220. I know they are all popular ones but didn’t get a single one. Thanks Tom for the tips about trying 1-3 days out. I’ll sure try
Party of 2, really didn’t get anything I wanted when I booked 60 days out for our Halloween trip. We did get Sci Fi though! : ) Not concerned as I can usually find what I need closer to date of travel. If I can’t, there’s always next time!
Just fyi- you can’t park if you’re on the walk-up list. We were for topolinos and they told us to go back to the hotel and take an Uber. We didn’t have time for that and we had a baby. I think it’s that way for all of the hotels with close transport now. I parked at the Poly for an Ohana walk-up a year ago, but 2 weeks ago we were turned away. Maybe it depends on the parking attendant too.
Currenntly, how often can someone land an ADR for a party of 4 at Space 220 at 60 days + 5 or 60 days + 6? We have postponed a couple of trips because of COVID issues and plan to go sometime this winter. In checking ADRs leading up to those postponed trips, I’ve never seen Space 220 available at 60 days, day of, or anything in between. Are they almost impossible to get?
I got space 220 lounge for 4 at 60+ 7. The restaurant was available at 60+5. We are going end of October to first week of November.
Another issue is people hoarding reservations. Until recently Disney was allowing multi reservations for the same time which I don’t mind. What I do mind is people grabbing anything and everything they can simply to be able to trade it for something they want. I’ve seen people with 10+ reservations that they don’t want but will use them to trade for Topolinos, space 220, chef mickeys etc.. Eventually all character meals or more popular dining options will be prepaid like CRT if Disney wants to eliminate this problem.
Leigh. Never knew people did this and was wondering even how? ARDR is in your name how can they trade? Do you mean they go in under another name? Wow am I naive.
There’s a facebook group of people doing this, it’s called disney dining reservation exchange drop/add. Not fair IMO to book ADR’s you have no intention of using.
One major change that is still in place is the shift from dining reservations opening up 180 days in advance to now opening up 60 days out. I’m not sure if I can justify that increasing demand over history, but ancedotally I tried to make more reservations that I wouldn’t have bothered before because this next trip almost finalized maybe three months ahead. (I still need to see if fishing trips or horseback riding are available on Tuesdays.) I just don’t believe that most people travel to Disney like I do, and certainly not more than the changes in supply in seating availability.
Also, people who can’t get character breakfasts were trying to get character lunches and dinner, so the return of those Tom mentions in another post should help!
It helps to do spot checks for ADRs. I just returned from a business trip in Orlando and my colleagues had not experience Disney dining. On a whim, I checked for a party of 6 for this past Tuesday night and the following all had availability for between 6PM and 7:30PM, O’Hana, California Grill, Le Cellier and Boat House. This is unheard of since I looked on My Disney Experience on the day of for dining.
Yesterday morning was my 60 days + 5 trip days. I was up and ready early, and there was no availability at 5:45 or 6am for any ADR I was looking for. (Topolinos, BBB, Ohana, Chef Art Smith, Hollywood & Vine) I ended up not getting to book anything at all. The crowd levels for November 14-18 are low to moderate. Is this normal?
Same here! We have the same travel dates. It was frustrating but I got some stuff and I’m holding out hope for the more difficult ones. I’ve had a lot of success using mousedining.com for past trips and difficult ADRs. I actually already got an Oga’s I was looking for with them. Good luck and maybe we’ll see you there!
Homecomin’ and Hollywood & Vine are not normally that difficult–those are definitely being held back. The others are popular, so you might have more difficulty with those.
BBB and other experiences book at midnight. Not 6am. So you would have missed that window by a few hours of you looked that morning.
Keep checking- we are going to Disney November 5-13, and they just released a number of Hollywood & Vine reservations for lunch & dinner last night, so we snagged those. We are a party of 7, but had success in getting 2 tables of 4.
Whitney I am also staying at Disney that week and started booking the 60 days out with great success more so than normal except for Hollywood and Vine which I got a 7:05 dinner time when I wanted earlier. I took it anyway and checked last night and a 5:50 became available and I changed to that time so what I would advise is keep on checking because people do cancel. Goof luck!!
Keep checking. We are going November 5th–13th, and just yesterday they released a bunch of Hollywood and Vine reservations for lunch and dinner and we were able to snag them. We are a party of 8, but had better luck doing 2 parties of 4.
We’ve been here all week and did alright – ended up getting in all the places we wanted except Space 220 (wasn’t willing to devote an hour in line for a lounge seat). It’s frustrating starting before dawn 60 days out and having only second-tier restaurants to choose from. We booked Trattoria Al Forno, Ale & Compass and Steakhouse 71, which were great! But for Citrico’s, California Grill and Topolinos, we went at opening and grabbed a bar seat – great for small groups of adults. It’s nice that there is an option for those who don’t luck out at 60 days. I’ve always wished Disney would open up half of it’s reservations on the day of…I remember all the World Showcase restaurants used to do that – on those cool 2-way video chats with cast members.
Citricos has been really tough recently, presumably due to the closure of Narcoossee’s. I’ve heard some interesting things from a friend about the weird way it has dumped ADR availability, too.
Totally agree with everything else–especially holding back half of reservations until day of.
I still come across people who talk about planning to go to Be Our Guest and just order a cupcake to see the inside because they read that “tip” on the internet. Wondering if some of the Be Our Guest same day inventory comes from people who show up, are shocked to find out it now costs $300 for a family and cancel or leave.
It’s possible that’s a contributing factor, but there have been several days when I’m refreshing Magic Kingdom dining options at 9 am and suddenly a ton of options for BOG appear. I doubt all of those people rope dropped the restaurant to check out the menu (or even looked at it for the first time while on the bus to the park).
We were able to get just a couple ADR before we went to WDW. But once we were there we were able to get a few more the day before or the day of. And the restaurants were not really full while we were at them for dinner
“And the restaurants were not really full while we were at them for dinner”
Yep. Even “fully booked” restaurants seldom are filling all of their tables, even now. It’s definitely better than a year ago, but the staffing shortages are still causing plenty of tables to go unfilled at many locations.
Thank you for another well written article. My husband and I are AP/DVC and take regular trips just the two of us. We have found it pretty easy to get what we would like on our go with the flow trips. We am taking 4 first timers in 22 days and I have been slowly moving around reservations for us. Since we have an 8 year old in the party dinner at 8:30 will not work. You have given me faith to keep trying.
You’re welcome!
Check periodically between now and then, but really get serious about 3 days out, and especially late the night before and early the day-of. Failing that, Walk-Up Waitlist does work!
Disney might have better luck filling positions if they didn’t require people to be available for every shift 7 days a week. I’d love to work for WDW but I’m not going to give them my entire week to work part time.
This is just one of MANY unforced errors that Walt Disney World has been making with its workforce. In an effort to “prevent” people from quitting or transferring, Disney has introduced several policies that have resulted in even more turnover.
The stories I’ve heard are really something else. It truly seems like managers in Florida don’t understand the realities of the current labor market, and are behaving like it’s still 2019. They don’t have the leverage they think they have.
This post doesn’t seem to mention the biggest issue, which is people snagging up dozens of reservations and just holding them in order to sell or trade them on Facebook groups. Unfortunately, since Disney does almost nothing to deter or penalize this behavior, it has become very pervasive. They just talked about this on a recent episode of The Disney Dish podcast.
I figured something like this might be going on- seems so unrealistic to not have availability two months in advance . They should cap the amount you can reserve and link the reservation to a park reservation or something.
I don’t think this is actually the “biggest” issue. It’s a problem, no doubt, this has always happened and Disney has done little to address it. It’s probably perceived as the biggest issue since it’s visible–just go on Facebook and you can see exactly what you described. It’s certainly frustrating, but it also dates back decades (even before Facebook!).
Staffing is the biggest issue that explains why ADR availability is different than normal. This is “invisible” to most guests, since we can’t see what staffing is like in kitchens or how many tables are going unfilled every night at WDW restaurants.
Here’s a novel idea, how about moving some of the employees from the dud restaurants (that always seem to have space available, Ale and Compass for example) to the more popular restaurants and open up more reservations?
While your point is well taken, Ale & Compass actually does solid business–at least, that’s what I’ve heard. It’ll definitely be true in the coming month thanks to more conventions at WDW.
Beyond that, I think managers at the specific resorts or parks would be reluctant to give up their staff for the “greater good” of Walt Disney World as a whole.
Having just returned from a late August trip, I had searched for Ohana and Cali Grill for 60 days straight for a party of 5 on a Sunday night. Nothing. Then day of, we drove to Poly, joined the walk up list and were sat – all in less than 20 minutes. I could have done Cali doing the same thing, but it was a long day and I didn’t think kids could handle CG.
The other glaring thing I noticed is that it’s very hard to get food in the AM. (Looking at you, connections with an hour long line at 10:30). Next trip, I think we will pass on all the rope dropping so we aren’t all hangry at 8am.
Thanks for sharing your experience, specifically with ‘Ohana and Cali Grill. We haven’t tried Walk-Up Waitlist at either anytime recently, so I wasn’t sure how that has been lately. Good to hear!
Totally agree about breakfast. More needs to come back ASAP. At least Sunshine Seasons and Crystal Palace are returning–it’s a start.
We went to DW last year in early December then again in early April. We always have done ADR’s after not having done them the first time we visited (wasn’t fun) . Both times we were able to get reservations- unfortunately not always for the place we really wanted. The April trip my wife somehow snagged a reservation for ogas cantina which was impossible in December. I’m hopeful we get to try the restaurants that have eluded us for six visits- it seems so unfair when u r on the button for 60 days prior and cant get a reservation for 4 .
I’m going in October and couldn’t find anything at Hollywood and Vine at 60 days back in August. Yesterday one of my alerts came through and snagged one at 11:30 for our party of 6. There were many reports in my October Facebook group of everyone all of a sudden was able to get H&V for all different times. It appears they did a big reservation dump l.